At the end of World War II the Greek Communist party (KKE) claimed that it would seek an accommodation with its domestic opponents, but the party soon launched a full-scale insurrection on its own initiative in the expectation of receiving decisive support from the Soviet Union. With civil war under way, the head of the KKE, Nikos Zahariadis, repeatedly told Soviet officials that victory was certain if the Greek Communists could obtain funding, weapons, and other equipment from the USSR and its allies. Although Soviet leaders were concerned that the KKE's aggressiveness would provoke a U.S. reaction, they permitted the clandestine shipment of large quantities of supplies that delayed but could not avert the insurgents' defeat. U.S. officials at the time largely misperceived the causes of the insurrection, but they correctly sensed that the KKE's dependence on Soviet-bloc assistance would ensure that a Communist victory would bring Greece into Moscow's orbit.

In early 1969 President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, received a briefing on the U.S. nuclear war plan, the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). Appalled by the catastrophic scale of the SIOP, Nixon and Kissinger sought military options that were more credible than massive nuclear strikes. Participants in the Air Force Nuclear Options project also supported more flexible nuclear war plans. Although Kissinger repeatedly asked Defense Department officials to construct limited options, they were skeptical that it would be possible to control nuclear escalation or to introduce greater flexibility without weakening the SIOP. Interagency studies presented a mixed verdict about the desirability of limited options; nevertheless, continued White House pressure encouraged Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to sponsor a major review of nuclear targeting. In 1972 the Foster panel developed concepts of limited, selective, and regional nuclear options that were responsive to Kissinger's interest in credible nuclear threats. The Foster panel's report led to the controversial "Schlesinger Doctrine" and further efforts to revise the SIOP, but serious questions endured about the whole concept of controlled nuclear warfare.

It has long been argued that the Eisenhower administration pursued a more assertive policy toward Iran than the Truman administration did. This interpretative consensus, though, has recently come under challenge. In the Journal of Cold War Studies in 1999, Francis Gavin argued that U.S. policy toward Iran in 1950-1953 became progressively more assertive in response to a gradual shift in the global U.S.-USSR balance of power. This article shares, and develops further, Gavin's revisionist theme of policy continuity, but it explains the continuity by showing that Truman and Eisenhower had the same principal objectives and made the same basic assumptions when devising policy. The more assertive policy was primarily the result of the failure of U.S. policy by early 1952. The Truman administration subsequently adopted a more forceful policy, which Eisenhower simply continued until all perceived options for saving Iran from Communism were foreclosed other than that of instigating a coup to bring about a more pliable government.

Klaus Fuchs was one of the most infamous spies of the Cold War, whose espionage feats altered the nature of the early postwar period. Drawing on newly released archival documents and witness testimony, this article considers the events surrounding his arrest and conviction. These sources reveal that even before Fuchs was arrested, he was used as a pawn. Because of his supreme importance to the British nuclear weapons program, some British officials initially believed that he should remain in his position, despite his admission of guilt. Until the matter was resolved, Fuchs was used unwittingly as a wedge between the British and U.S. intelligence services. Moreover, when the United States criticized British security standards, the Fuchs case was used by MI5 to cajole and mislead Parliament and the public.